Talk:John Thaw

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re-added deleted sections[edit]

I have re-added sections on Morse, bibliography and awards. Can't see why they were deleted. Spanglej (talk) 14:48, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Right Leg[edit]

Watching Morse one day I noticed he had an odd gait. His right leg moved in an unusual way when he walked. He maintained a balance that meant it was unnoticeable generally, but now, every time I watch an episode, I wonder about it. Does anyone know the reason for his right leg's mobility issue? LookingGlass (talk) 13:06, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Thaw had a noticeable peculiarity of gait, his right leg showing evidence of "dorsiflexor paralysis" or foot drop, for which there have been several explanations. Some even speculated that he had a wooden leg below the knee, or that he had contracted polio as a child. Several sources state that it resulted from an accident at the age of 15 when he tripped over a curb and broke his foot rushing to catch a bus to school.[1] However, in her autobiography, Hancock says that Thaw's grandfather had a withered leg and walked with a limp; Thaw apparently copied him and also walked with a limp all his life. A car accident in his early twenties exacerbated the problem."
"Johns grandfather had a withered leg and walked with a limp, John apparently copied him and also walked with a limp all his life and being involved in a car accident only exaggerated the fact."

On an entirely unrelated matter, John Thaw seems unusual to have worked under his real name, and Sheila in that she retained her maiden name, a quite radical decision for 1969.

If there are no comments I propose to add the substantive part of the above information into the article. LookingGlass (talk) 13:32, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be an entry under "Personal life" but it was deleted. I suspect this was because there is no conclusive evidence and it was speculation, which WP tries to avoid. The phrase "Some even speculated..." is not okay without good sourcing. All the above quotes from answers.com etc were cut and pasted from previous WP articles (as usual). This is the danger of dodgy statements being regarded as facts by less than conscientious databases, search engines etc. On the linked page from April, the only source is IMDb which is a volunteer written database, much like Wikipedia. IMDB is not seen as a solid source. Please don't just re-add it. A ref'd quote from Sheila Hancock's biography on the matter - the actual book - might be useful. Just to flag up - it's always useful to look back over the years to see what an article contained before. [See View history / browse history]. There is often masses of material that has been cut out, for good or ill. Best wishes Spanglej (talk) 20:33, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It seems that Thaw's estate or Sheila Hancock, but not Thaw, wants to perpetuate the myth of a damaged leg. If you look at an episode of an earlier Sherlock Holmes, the series with Jeremy Brett, in which Thaw has the role of a one legged criminal who has a peg leg, you will see that he at least did not have a leg at all below the knee. (At one point his peg gets stuck in a mud flat.) (1987, The Sign of Four). I looked closely, and this was before the days of digital special effects that could have faked it, in my opinion. A side bar is that, as I remember, there was an inside joke - a character's name, the young woman (Jenny Seagrove) who brings the problem to Holmes had the last character name of Morstan and Brett always emphasized the first syllable. "Miss MORStan." Wink wink. I have submitted this correction to IMDB and it has not been accepted, so either I am flat wrong, or someone wanted to hide the disability. Thaw must not have, or he would not have played a peg-legged thief. 75.68.188.126 (talk) 08:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is a bit of a strange and irresponsible comment. Actors with both legs intact have been playing characters missing one or both legs since the silent era, no CGI required (Lon Chaney in The Penalty, for example), and everything from camera angles to costuming in The Sign of the Four indicates the same effects were used for Thaw that had been used on dozens of actors for decades. His appearance in the film is no proof that he had ever had a below-knee amputation in real life. Further, the character missing a leg and the woman named Miss Morstan are original to the text, and it seems unlikely that anyone would have gone to the trouble to find the exact right text to use to make a made-for-TV movie that would contain some oblique reference to Thaw's "hidden" disability. Why would they? Attempting to use Wikipedia to push forward an implausible conspiracy theory in an effort to accuse Hancock or Thaw's estate of duplicity is highly inappropriate. Clockster (talk) 11:57, 19 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have no knowledge of John Thaw's leg(s). But in the Endeavour series (Young Morse), Series 1 Episode 4 concludes with the young Morse receiving a minor bullet wound to his leg. The closing scene is a doctor telling him that's he's patched it up, but that he may develop a minor limp in middle age. This sort of trailing of obscure details for the later Morse is a regular feature of Endeavour. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:00, 23 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have been watching a number of Morse episodes on ITV3 and came to the WP article to find out about Thaw's right leg. As a former podiatric biomechanic Thaw's gait presents as someone with: either an artificial right leg (from the knee) or drop foot. Either way it would be useful to have information on his leg in the article. I don't see what is wrong with quoting Sheila Hancock's book on this. ixo (talk) 15:52, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Robert Fairclough & Mike Kenwood, in Sweeney! The Official Companion (London, Reynolds & Hearn, 2002, ISBN 1 903111 43 9), p.17: "The fondness the British public felt for Thaw was evident when letters were sent to the press expressing worries about Morse's occasional slight limp on screen. It was subsequently explained that this was due to Thaw tripping and breaking his foot while running for a bus at the age of 15." Sheila Hancock's suggestion that he got a permanent limp just from copying his lame grandfather's walk as a child seems, comparatively, a bit curious. Perhaps Thaw used to give different explanations at different times, like Dave Allen with his missing finger. Khamba Tendal (talk) 17:03, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • I have been watching an episode of The Sweeney from 1975 and there is a scene where Thaw walks along for a few seconds and there is no noticeable limp at all.

Performances[edit]

Film[edit]

1971 The Abominable Dr. Phibes -- I watched the movie last night and neither did I recognize him, nor was he listed on the credit screen. Web searches regarding his participation in this movie don't yield any result either. He does none the less appear in the sequel 1972 Dr. Phibes Rises Again where he appears as Shavers. So should the link to The Abominable Dr. Phibes remain in place? Is there any evidence that he actually was in that movie?95.114.133.95 (talk) 12:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)Stefan Reitz[reply]

Don't add either until you have solid sources. Best wishes Span (talk) 21:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In re: Z-Cars[edit]

The text: he had a glass head, so couldn't take the alcohol so often part of the copper's work (used of the character he played, rather than of Mr. Thaw directly!), seems to me to be both POV and non-encyclopaedic. I’ve never actually heard the expression “glass head” used to mean someone who can’t hold their drink, which is the meaning I take from the context, so would suggest that it is slang or just very informal speech. Perhaps it could be re-written? Jock123 (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have often wondered about the reason for John Thaw's limp but never bothered to look up anything on it. However tonight (in Australia), 12/10/2016, I watched parts of an episode of "Inspector Morse", episode title unknown, which showed him running for quite some distance. He looked as if he was running quite normally. The episode involved the murders of about three people and seemed to be centered around a young woman named Imogen and the sexual abuse of two children, one now an adult, by the Master of Beaufort College at Oxford University. 58.179.175.10 (talk) 13:39, 11 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Music[edit]

It would be good to include in the article a discussion of Thaw's connection with music. I don't know a lot about this but I do know that music was an important part of Thaw's life, as it was for his character Morse. 76.130.134.87 (talk) 02:34, 9 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Onedin Line[edit]

He also appeared in the first series of the Onedin Line. 178.78.96.170 (talk) 08:11, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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